United States

The Trump-Kim 2018 summit, “zero tolerance,” and separation of immigrant families

Less than a year after exchanging threats of nuclear war with Kim Jong-Un, the mercurial Trump responded in May 2018 to warming relations between North and South Korea by preparing plans for a summit meeting with the North Korean leader. The meeting, which was to be held in June, was cancelled by Trump after a North Korean official characterized threatening statements by Vice President Pence as “ignorant and stupid.” When Kim’s government adopted a conciliatory tone, Trump reversed his decision, and the two men held a historic meeting—the first face-to-face encounter between the sitting leaders of the United States and North Korea—in Singapore on June 12. With the world watching, Trump surprised both South Korea and the Pentagon by promising to end joint U.S.–South Korea military exercises, while Kim pledged to work “toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” a promise that soon appeared to be contradicted by North Korean actions.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration had become the object of widespread outrage over its implementation in early April of a policy that called for the children of migrants entering the U.S. illegally to be separated at the U.S. border from their parents, all of whom were detained under the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. As awareness grew of the resulting situation—which saw even very young children removed from their parents and relocated—criticism of the policy spread across the political spectrum. Initially, the administration defended the policy and claimed that the law prevented it from taking another approach until Congress acted. Republicans attempted to address the problem, pushing through broader immigration legislation, but it failed to be enacted. By mid-June the hue and cry had grown so loud and the potential political damage loomed so large that Trump was compelled to issue an executive order terminating the separations. In the wake of the order, the Department of Homeland Security announced that 2,342 children had been separated at the border from 2,206 adults between May 5 and June 9.